Burst pipe closes Campbeltown Museum and damages collections

Campbeltown Museum has had to close as a result of a floodingafter a pipe burst, affecting the museum’s collection store in the town’s Burnett Building.

The building has suffered considerable damage and most of the museum’s artefacts in store have been affected to some extent.

The museum itself has had to close because its display gallery is now being used as a store for items which have been removed from the flooded area.

An emergency salvage operation began as soon as the water damage was discovered, jointly led by staff from Kilmartin House Museum and Auchindrain Museum. A team of volunteers moved all items out of the building, and began sorting them according to the conservation treatment needed, if any.

A large proportion of the items had been stored in heavy duty plastic crates with sealable lids. These have not suffered any damage.

Others were on open shelves, in museum-quality cardboard boxes or in bubble-wrap and/or acid free tissue. All of these items have suffered some degree of water damage.

The one room in the store unaffected by the leak was the art store, containing a number of framed pictures and many unframed prints and drawings.

The archaeology collection is unaffected, as, fortunately, it had recently been taken to Kilmartin House Museum for cataloguing.

Councillor Neil Mackay, Argyll and Bute’s spokesperson for Arts, Culture, Leisure and Sport, says: ‘Although the extent of the damage is significant, it is very much less than it might have been. We seem to have been lucky in several respects.

‘However, there are many items which have suffered considerable damage and work is ongoing to assess how best to deal with those.

‘The store building is now completely empty, so that we can start the process of drying it out and assessing any structural damage. The building is likely to be unfit for use for many months.

‘Unfortunately, this has meant that we have had to close Campbeltown Museum, which is being used as a temporary store, until further notice.

‘We are urgently looking at options for alternative storage facilities to allow us to re-open the museum as soon as possible’.